Save Me the Plums

by Ruth Reichl

  “Is she shining me on?” I asked Larry.

  “No.” He actually smiled. “Things are better. Louisiana Tourism is spending its entire advertising budget with us, which is huge. But that’s nothing compared to the Macy’s coup.”

  Nancy had persuaded the retail giant to layer five covers on the December issue, each featuring a picture of a different Christmas cookie. Larry pulled out a mock-up, riffling the layers to demonstrate. “It gives them five times the ad space and us five times the revenue. We’ll get press for it too; nobody’s done anything like this before. And I’m sure those pop-up cookie shops we created helped sell the space.”

  The shops had been the inspiration of Richard and our special-projects editor, Jackie Terrebonne. “What if we sold our Christmas cookies?” they’d suggested one day. “Everybody likes cookies, but some people don’t like to bake. We could donate the proceeds to charity.”

  Before long, Richard had designed clever display carts and elegant packaging. In the end they also invented a line of Gourmet Christmas-cookie cards, complete with recipes. Larry did the numbers. “It’ll be a nice little revenue stream,” he concluded.

  We’d also managed, with great difficulty, to persuade the circulation people to include a subscription to the magazine with every copy of our huge new cookbook. It made the thirty-five-dollar cover price a serious bargain and was a painless way to increase Gourmet’s subscriber base. I left for the book tour as the first reviews were coming in, and I knew Si was going to be pleased; we would hit the bestseller list again. For once I left town with a happy heart.

  A week into the tour I landed in Seattle, one of my favorite cities, and went to lunch with a reporter from the Post-Intelligencer. The interview had just begun when my phone began to ring. Tom Wallace’s number floated onto my screen.

  “Yes?” In my current mood, I expected more good news. Even when Tom said I was wanted in New York, I didn’t get it.

  “I have to be in Portland tomorrow, promoting the cookbook.”

  “Forget Portland,” he said. “You’re needed in New York.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Just come back.” His tone had turned ominous. “Be in the office tomorrow.”

  It finally dawned on me that this was the call I’d been anticipating for ten years: I was about to be fired. To my surprise there was no panic, only sadness. I hoped the next editor would not clean house and everyone would be safe, but for myself I felt no fear. It wouldn’t last—I knew that—but in the moment what I felt mostly was relief.

  Almost everything I’d cherished about my job had vanished, leaving me feeling like little more than a salesman. I’d always known I was just a visitor in Si’s luxuryland, and the thrill of all those perks had faded. I told myself that I could do without the fancy hotels, the limos, and the clothing allowance; Paris had shown me that I didn’t need them. Peering into the future, I thought how different my life was going to be without the people who made my life so easy: Robin, Karen, Mustafa. Then I reassured myself that I still had all the people who really mattered: Michael, Nick, Bob, a large group of wonderful friends. I reminded myself of all the books I still wanted to write. This, I repeated over and over, was going to be fine.

  I took the red-eye to New York, sitting up all night, but when I got to the office Robin was looking even more ragged than I felt. “They want us all in the conference room at ten,” she said.

  “All of us?” I was stunned; I could hardly believe that Si was going to turn this into a public spectacle, fire me in front of my own staff. It did not seem like him; he was not a cruel man.

  We filed in grimly and stood silently watching as Si strolled in among us. He was brief. “After long deliberation, we have decided to close Gourmet.”

  We looked at one another, uncomprehending. Close Gourmet? Surely we’d misunderstood. They could fire us all. Take the magazine in a new direction. But they could not shut down such a revered institution. A world without Gourmet was unimaginable.

  “It’s very sad,” Si added.

  “How soon do we need to be out of here?” I don’t remember who shouted the question.

  “That’s immaterial.” Si was at his most imperious, and for a moment we all relaxed; the end was not imminent. The closing, at least, would be slow, orderly, dignified. “Your key cards will work today,” he continued. “And tomorrow. Until five P.M.”

  It was like a sucker punch; we hadn’t seen it coming. Tomorrow? We had to be out tomorrow? Glances flew wildly around the room as we absorbed his meaning: It was immaterial to him. As far as Si was concerned, Gourmet was already gone.

  “What about the December issue?” With its big units, its exclusive business, and its five covers, December was already at the printer.

  “There will be no December issue.”

  Someone—who?—began to sob.

  This seemed to galvanize Si. “Human Resources will be available to answer any questions.” They were the last words I ever heard him say.

  We stood, staring at the empty space where he had stood. Doc put his arms around me and I began to cry. My mind was not working, and I found it impossible to process the fact that Gourmet, a publication older than I, was dead. I’d fortified myself against the pain of being fired, but this was worse: They had murdered the magazine.

  It was James Rodewald who broke the silence. He walked out of the conference room and into the glorified wine cellar he called an office, returning with an armful of bottles. “I’ve got hundreds,” he said, “and we’re not going to leave them a single drop.”

  We drank while the phones rang and people packed up a lifetime of possessions. Many had spent their entire careers at Gourmet, and a cloud of dismal unreality hung over the office.

  Is death always like this? I wondered as I discovered the strange, enervating energy of endings. Light-headed and unable to eat, I raced through the office, trailed by Robin, who was fielding calls from every news outlet in the country.

  “I have nothing to say,” I kept telling her.

  “They still want to talk to you,” she insisted, dragging me back to the phone, where I repeated, over and over, “I don’t know.” It became a mantra as one reporter after another demanded to know why Condé Nast had closed Gourmet. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. “Why Gourmet and not Bon Appétit?” they kept asking, and I could only repeat the answer.

  “What did Si say?” they insisted, hungry for crumbs.

  “That it is very sad.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Condé Nast is a privately held company. He doesn’t need to explain himself to anyone. And certainly not to me.”

  I was exhausted, a little bit drunk, overwhelmed. Human Resources asked me to stay on for six more weeks to finish the book tour and launch the television show, and for some reason I said yes.

  Later I wondered why I’d agreed to honor contracts that no longer concerned me, but the entire day is enclosed in a bubble of unreality. When the cookbook’s editor, Rux Martin, called, begging me to attend a special dinner in Kansas City the following day, I said yes. Farmers had spent three months raising special chickens to celebrate the book, and as Rux pointed out, the chickens had already been slaughtered. Somehow, that made sense; it would be wrong to waste them.

  The sky grew dark and evening approached. We were in a crazy collective state of inebriation, running in and out of one another’s offices to hug and weep. When would we ever be together again? In a maudlin moment I shouted, “Everyone come to my house!” Then I turned to Robin.

  “Call Mustafa and get enough cars for everyone. Si can afford it.” It occurred to me, as we rode uptown in this last gasp of silly splendor, that I would probably never say those words again.

  We stayed up most of the night, and when Mustafa arrived the next morning, I was hungover. “You haven’t eaten anything,
” Michael said as he saw me off. “Promise you’ll get something at the airport.” He was deeply opposed to my going and felt bad that I had to do it alone. “I wish I could come with you,” he repeated over and over again. “I don’t know why you agreed to do this—it’s not as if it’s your book.”

  “It seems like the right thing to do. It would be rotten to run out on the publishers at this point. Houghton Mifflin agreed to Si’s million-and-a-quarter advance, and this is certainly not their fault.”

  “Just take care of yourself.” He looked so worried.

  Mustafa wore the same expression, and he was almost speechless with chagrin. “I can’t believe it,” he said as he dropped me at Newark Airport. He stopped, searching for words. “I’ll be waiting when you come back. You know I’ll always be your driver.”

  I got out and stumbled around the airport in a daze. “Eat,” I said to myself. “You promised that you’d eat.” I walked into the little sandwich shop and rooted through the offerings, picking up a steak sandwich; maybe it would give me a needed jolt of energy. I went to the cash register, but as I pulled out my wallet the cashier shook her head.

  “This one’s on me,” she said. “I loved that magazine. I’m really going to miss it.”

  EPILOGUE

  THOSE WORDS WERE PROPHETIC: I missed the magazine terribly. Just not in any of the ways I had anticipated.

  Like every other Condé Nast editor, I’d let Si tie me up in golden strings. The money, the limos, and the clothing allowance were just the beginning: He kept us so thoroughly insulated from ordinary life that for ten years I never balanced a checkbook, made a reservation, or knew where I was meant to be at any given moment. Someone was always there to see to the quotidian details, and the job often seemed too comfortable to quit.

  There were certainly times in those first few months that I trudged to the subway in the snow thinking wistfully of Mustafa’s magic chariot. I hated every hour wasted on the phone arguing over health-insurance bills or simply being stuck on hold. And I’ll admit that I occasionally longed to eat a three-star meal.

  But I’d prepared myself for that; Paris had shown me how little those things really mattered. Before long the life I’d led at Condé Nast began to fade, until it seemed like a distant dream.

  But I had not anticipated the fear. As the months passed, I began to think I might never get another job and we’d end up losing everything: our house, our car, our savings. I had dreams about being a bag lady.

  What surprised me most was how much the solitude unnerved me. I had worked with people all my life and now, alone at the computer, I missed my colleagues with a pain that was nearly physical. I’d loved the collaborative nature of magazine-making, and the long solitary days at my desk were deeply depressing.

  With that feeling came a terrible sense of failure. I loved my Gourmet family and felt that I had let them down. Sixty-five people I cared about had lost their jobs, and as the days wore on this feeling overwhelmed me.

  The best antidote for sadness, I have always believed, is tackling something that you don’t know how to do. Now I decided it was time to try my hand at fiction. But it was hopeless. I sat at my desk, staring at an empty screen, incapable of finding words. My family and friends gathered around me, offering solace, and I did what I have always done in times of crisis: I began to feed them. And in the kitchen I found comfort.

  Then the Gourmet people started finding jobs. Doc went back to Cook’s Illustrated, Richard became creative director of Coach, and Sertl took a chance on an Internet start-up. Larry, to nobody’s surprise, was courted by half the publications at Condé Nast. But going back to simply counting beans no longer satisfied him, and he eventually went off to find his fortune as a writer. Meanwhile, Jane became an editor at Martha Stewart Living, and most of the cooks were snapped up by other epicurean magazines. Gina Marie opened a baking business (she specializes in birthday cakes), and Robin became the reservationist at a famous restaurant. Life, in other words, moved on. It was time for me to do that too.

  Finally, haltingly, I began to write again. I was sitting at my computer, lost in a made-up world, when Giulio called to say his mother had passed away. He wanted to bequeath me her treasure trove of old Gourmets. Did I want them?

  I hesitated. The issues from my own Gourmet years stared down from the bookshelf, but I could hardly bear to look at them. Still, it was a sweet and generous offer and I could not figure out how to turn him down. “I’d love your mother’s magazines,” I told Giulio. I did not add that they were headed straight for the basement.

  But when the postman rang the bell, I couldn’t fight the urge to peek into the boxes, just to see what they contained. The topmost issue sported a fine old Henry Stahlhut drawing on the cover. I remembered this romantic cake, and it gave me a warm feeling, like encountering an old friend after a long time apart.

  I pulled out the next issue. And the next, unable to resist the lure of those old drawings. Hours passed, and still I sat there, magazines piling up around me.

  Suddenly, there was the leaping swordfish. It was a very ancient issue—1946—but even after all this time the fish had the vibrant panache that had called to me so long ago. Almost unconsciously, I opened the magazine to “Night of Lobster” and found myself, once again, on a midnight island off the coast of Maine, the sky above me bright with stars. Once again I smelled the ocean brine, the seaweed, felt damp sand beneath my feet. And I remembered, as I read, just how it felt to be eight years old and setting off on a great adventure.

  I reached for the next issue. Stahlhut had drawn something called “Chilean Paella,” a ridiculously old-fashioned concoction surrounded by fussy little artichoke hearts stuffed with olives. But when I opened the magazine I was reminded of all the reasons I’d first treasured Gourmet. In September 1960, most Americans were happily sitting down to sturdy meals of meatloaf with mashed potatoes, but those early issues offered an alternate foodscape. Here were recipes for Indian dal, lasagna with handmade pasta, mushrooms stuffed with snails, empanadas, Viennese boiled beef, even home-brewed vinegar. It was an international cornucopia, and I thought, proudly, that the magazine had truly been a pioneer. Then I turned another page and found myself staring at a recipe for German apple pancakes. It had been years since I’d tasted this particular dish, but the memory was so sharply etched that I could literally taste it.

  My family had only one ritual: dinner at Lüchow’s, a Wagnerian opera of a restaurant that looked, even in the fifties, like it had sailed onto 14th Street sometime in the very distant past. Lüchow’s was famous for its enormous size, its classic German food, and the towering Christmas tree that soared above the tables during the holiday season.

  We dined there once a week all through my childhood. We went because it was an easy walk from our apartment. We went because it reminded Dad of home. But mostly we went because Mom, normally so indifferent to food, was in love with Lüchow’s apple pancake. Over the years Dad and I sampled every dish on the menu; Mom never ordered anything but that pancake.

  I had never thought of making it myself, but now, overcome by a desire for this taste of my childhood, I studied the recipe. I had everything I needed: apples, eggs, lemon, sugar.

  There’s something soothing about peeling apples, about the way they come whispering out of their skins. Slicing them is another pleasure, and I listened for the juicy crunch of the knife sliding through the flesh. I cut into a lemon, treasuring the scent of the aromatic oils as they flew into the air.

  Soon the seductive aroma of apples melting into butter drew my family to the kitchen. Even the cats came, twining around our ankles as we opened the oven and pulled out the pan. The smell was so alluring that we burned our fingers snatching bites from the pan.

  Then there was an awful silence. Finally Nick said, “Your mother really liked this?”

  Looking at that sad concoction, I remembered the y
affy and how restaurant recipes always needed to be tweaked. In 1960 Gourmet had neither kitchens nor cooks.

  “C’mon, Mom.” Nick opened a bottle of wine (he’s almost thirty now), and handed me a glass. “I’m sure you can figure this out.”

  I tried to remember. The Lüchow’s pancake wasn’t fat and puffy, like this Gourmet version, but svelte and elegant. I pictured Mom, saw her face begin to glow as the waiter doused the pancake with rum and set it on fire.

  Working from memory, I began breaking eggs into a bowl. The batter should be thin: a lot of milk and just enough flour to frame the apples.

  As the scent of melting butter filled the kitchen, Nick’s partner, Monica, wordlessly began to peel more apples. Michael poured himself a glass of wine. Outside, the sun began to set, filling the sky with a blaze of pink and orange. Sam Cooke was singing as I heated up the skillet. We stood there, shimmying around the stove, waiting to see what would happen.

  Sometimes you know, before the very first taste, when a recipe is right. When I slid that floppy crepe out of the skillet, it looked exactly like the one my mother used to love. I sprinkled it with sugar, rolled it up, then heated rum and struck a match.

  The flames leapt up, and as they died I wished, for just a moment, that my parents could be with us. They’d encouraged me to follow my passion—even though it was one they did not share. It’s been a long and very satisfying journey.

  I hope they know that.

  GERMAN APPLE PANCAKE

  •••

  2 tart cooking apples (Granny Smiths are good)

  1 lemon

  ½ stick (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter